SWITZERLAND 1ST WEEK

After the longest flight ever... we finally got here on Monday and it has been busy from the start.  The day we got here we hiked around Leysin (the village we are staying in).  We went to the grocery store, the train station, and hiked up to a lookout of Lake Geneva.  This pic is on tuesday at the Chateau de Chillon in Veyve.  We spent the day here and besides going to this castle we went to a couple other museums, and a little flea market.  Lake Geneva is so cool, the only bummer is that it has been rainy the whole week.  Today it was sunny when we woke up, but the mist has slowly moved in.  I think it is because we are so high up in the mountains!  Wednesday we went up to the Saint Bernard Hospice.  It is a Monistary that is way up in the mountains and sits on the border between Switzerland and Italy.  In order for you to stay at the Monistary, you have to make a pilgrimage of some sort which for our group meant hiking up there.  It really wasn't bad, it was a three mile hike and for the first part we walked on the road.  The third section of the hike we snowshoed up the mountain.  Dominique (he is the owner of the bed and breakfast we are staying at) lead us up there, he is a way nice guy but really old country Switzerland so we were all way over prepared and we went SO SLOW!!  He is always playing his trumpet for us.  Check out his sweet Smith sunglasses...  He wanted us to stay in groups and didn't want anyone going ahead.  So with a group of Fourty, you can imagine how long it took.  And by the way, it poured the entire hike and by the time we got up to the hospice, all the dry clothes we brought were wet.  We stayed up there for three days and pretty much ate a lot and had a good amount of free time to meditate and for Jackson take pictures and draw.  We took a sweet hike the second day we were there, but didn't make it all the way up to the top because of the fog.  It was all snowshoeing and on the way down we slid on our buts a good part of it and laughed so hard.  Some of the guys were jumping off this ledge and it was so steep that they would roll out of control, it was so funny to watch..So... by the time we got back from the Monsistary on Friday  we were all pretty ready to come home.  This pic is of me and the Italian border patrol, they were all about getting pictures with all the girls.  If you look close at my pants it looks like I wet my pants but I promise I didn't!  My pants were all wet from sliding down the mountain.  So, finally on Saturday we went to Sion, and looked at an old witch tower, an 11th century church, and listened to a concert played on the oldest playing organ in the world.  After looking at all of these we headed down town because there was an art festival going on, plus the whole Euro cup is going on.  There were big parades and tons of people with jerseys on, it was crazy but so much fun!!  So that really sums up our week, I'm sorry that I'm writing so much but I feel like in order to let everyone know how the trip is going I have to write it all out!  Now, as for my fam and sisters I know they'll all want to know what we have been eating because my family is way too interested in food... but that's ok because I am too.  We have had all kinds of stuff for dinner, pasta, curry chicken, soup (a lot of soup!), fish and creamed spinach, and last night we had kind of like a goulash dish.  We have so much bread, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  My favorite has been breakfast, we have homeade yogurt and it's plain and you can just mix in like jam or honey and eat it with granola.  That has been my favorite.  They also have a lot of really good black licorice candy mixes that I have loved!  The desserts at dinner have been... good icecream, chocolate mousse, flan, lemon custard and pure'd fruit.  One thing I think is kind of cool is that they really don't waste anything.  If there is left over dinner, they blend it up and serve it as soup for the appetizer the next night.  Last night our soup was blended up fish, rice, and spinach.  Yeah, that was a little weird and interesting... but good. Of course the chocolate is amazing and same with the cheese and bread...  Anyhow, so that sums it up.  I plan on just posting every Sunday about the previous week so everyone can follow up with what we are doing.  Sorry again for all the writing!  We miss you all and will post again next Sunday!!